by Victor Allen
**********
His job for today was to take samples to test for HCG from women who thought they might be pregnant, and to do Rh testing for women who knew they were pregnant. The waiting room was packed with big bellies and skinny young women wondering if they were about to become mothers for the first or the fifth time. It wasn’t really a lab like the main hospital had. There was a centrifuge, blood testing reagents including a “D” antigen reagent -known to lay people as Rh type- a gram-stain machine and a couple of microscopes. Enough for blood typing and urinalysis and that was about it. He had only been in the clinic a few minutes when the Grim Reaperess stepped into the lab to fetch him.
“I’ve got a drug seeker, I think,” Jennifer said.
“Have you called security?”
“On their way. You’re the only man here right now. I need you to run interference.”
Richard slid his chair back.
“Where to?”
“Exam room three. It’s a man and his... girlfriend, I guess. They both reek of cat pee.”
Richard nodded. He followed her down the hall to exam room three, but before they even got there they saw the man and his girlfriend in the dispensary. The drugs were behind a locked metal grating and the man was intently trying to pick the padlock. He didn’t even notice Jennifer and Richard step into the room. But his girlfriend did.
She turned as they entered the room, her eyes wallowing out to the size of manhole covers in the alligatored and lined face that looked twenty years older than it was.
“Randall!” she cried. “Look out!”
The man turned as Richard crossed the room to restrict him. He was thin and wiry, his brown eyes the color of muddy water, his leathery skin unhealthy and jaundiced. As Richard got ahold of him, the man’s ammonia tinged breath in his face nearly gagged him. Holding onto the man was like trying to throttle a bundle of sputtering, high-voltage wires. Richard had begun to get the upper hand when the girlfriend leaped onto his back like a snarling, one hundred and twenty pound wildcat.
They waltzed around the room like a deranged, three headed Japanese movie monster, crashing into drawers and tables. Glass and steel clattered and clanked. The drug vials clinked ominously as Richard whammed the woman on his back into the steel grating over the drugs. Coupled with the writhing, drug fueled gnome in front of him and the snarling, slashing and biting Gorgon on his back, Richard lost his equilibrium and pitched forward. The crown of his head cracked against the edge of the stainless steel counter and his teeth clicked together. He grayed out a little as he sagged to the floor, semi-conscious.
The two drug seekers extricated themselves and made a frantic sprint for the exit, scrambling past the startled, yelping ladies in the waiting room. Richard tried to get up but was a little woozy. He felt like he might be okay to stand in thirty seconds or so.
Jennifer knelt beside him.
“You okay?”
“Where’s security,” Richard asked.
“Just outside. I think they ran right into ‘em.”
Richard gingerly stood up. He felt okay other than being a little dizzy, and the top of his head hurt, but that was it.
“This,” he said “will be a story to tell the grandkids.”
“How’s your head,” Jennifer asked.
“I’m fine,” Richard said. “Seriously. Just a bump on the head. I’ve had worse ice cream headaches.”
“When I see an MD next to your name,” Jennifer said, “I’ll accept your diagnosis. Until then, you’re heading for an MRI.”
Richard sighed. It might not be such a bad idea. His wooziness didn’t seem to be abating as quickly as he would like. If anything, it seemed to be getting measurably worse.
“Maybe I’d better call Elizabeth,” he said with a wry smile. “I might not be making it to the cabin.”
“I’ll do that,” Jennifer said. “You just worry about yourself right now.”